BATTICALOA: When gunfire and heavy artillery rained on the eastern town of Muttur early August it turned 24-year-old Anjani’s house into a mound of rubble. The renewed conflict did not just mean that she lost her home. She lost her job as well when the international humanitarian organization she was employed at withdrew from Muttur citing security concerns after 17 local members of the French organization Action Against Hunger was shot dead in an execution type killing amidst heavy fighting in the area.

To Anjani, who now lives in a cramped refugee camp in Batticaloa, around 140km from her home town Muttur, the visit of a Norwegian peace envoy who arrived in Sri Lanka early last week to persuade the LTTE and the government to resume peace talks, meant hope of her getting her job back.

“The organization I was working for informed me that if peace talks resume and normalcy is restored, they would restart the humanitarian projects in the area and give us our jobs back. Now there are many, who like me, are jobless and homeless,” she says. Muttur is a town inhabited mostly by Muslims where Tamils are a minority.

“The government is keen to resettle the Muslims there but we have not got any security guarantee for the safety of Tamils and we do not want to return,” she adds.

Totally dependent on the sporadic distribution of dry rations by NGOs and the government, she faces a bleak future but share the same view as the other 156 families living in the camp. They vow they will not go back to their homes until the guns are fully silent and there is a definite assurance of safety by the government.

Until such time they are ready to make do without even the barest of necessities, lining in winding queues to get rice and dhal (pulse), the only meal they are assured of. Vegetables are a luxury that only a few of the thousands of war displaced who have managed to find odd jobs in the Batticaloa town can afford.

Meanwhile, general life in the Batticaloa town is rigged with fear as civilians rush home well before dark and soldiers and policemen line the streets checking identities of persons and inspecting vehicles.

With just a single utensil to cook all her meals, 70-year-old Mariemutty from the area of Sampoor, formerly a LTTE eastern stronghold, inspects a near empty bottle of cooking oil she had received last week from a non-governmental organization. So far since leaving Sampoor which was taken over by the military end August, she has kept herself alive by selling the few pieces of gold jewellery she owned but now she says there is nothing more to sell. A refugee living for the past two months at the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya in the Batticaloa town, Mariemutty when not worrying about her daily survival is preoccupied with a so far futile search for her husband.

“We fled the shelling and the artillery together and when we were passing through rebel controlled territory he told me to proceed to government-controlled areas and that he would join me after searching for another relative who had also gone missing. Up to now I do not know where he is and I do not know whom to approach to search for him,” she says breaking down in tears.

She is not the only one who had lost their family members in the melee that took place when fleeing the war struck areas.

Six-year-old Sajana who seemed inseparable from a limbless doll, the toy she retained all through the long and arduous journey to safety, does not know when she will see her father next.

“The latest fighting end last week in the coastal regions of Batticaloa in Vaharai and Marnkerni has so far displaced at least 3,000 families. There is no shelter for them and they stay under trees with nothing. There is no water, no food”, says Sasikala Rathnakumar, a humanitarian worker in Batticaloa.